


Slipping Roles

by ParadifeLoft



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Angst, F/F, Gen, Identity Issues, Sith Empire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-16 23:59:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4644864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadifeLoft/pseuds/ParadifeLoft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ahriss Kallig questions the wisdom of going to Korriban to select a replacement apprentice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slipping Roles

“Apprentice, he’s powerful, but he’s not the whole Empire. His attempts on your life are merely a personal vendetta, not the death mark of a traitor – and the Academy is strictly off-limits to political bribery, on the order of the Dark Council. You’ll be fine.”

The growls of Khem’s voice, contorted into the lilting syntax and centuries-younger accent of Ahriss’s former Master, lent the words far less reassurance than they otherwise might have had. She’d wanted to trust, when the ghost had insisted on its damning words; now all she could imagine was one lie or another, betrayal and death for a hundred different nuances of reason, hooded in this fair-seeming robe of help. Blood of the jen’ari, but she _needed_ the help…

"I’m not your apprentice,” she replied finally, clipped and weary. Eyes cast down at her datapad, rather than be forced to look at the being that had somehow combined two people she had comfort enough in to lower her shields around, into one she had no comfort with at all.

Not that she had any idea what she _was_ , if not Darth Zash’s apprentice. _Lord Ahriss Kallig_ , she was recorded as now in the Imperial databases (a revelation that had shocked the historically-minded Zash, when the first flash of it came to her eyes), but… _Lord_ was a person with a small Dromund Kaas manor, inheriting the beginnings of a power base, a place amongst the rungs and branches that were the human structures of the Citadel. Not some little girl with all her supports pulled out from under her by the very people who should have settled her in, now drifting as aimless in space as the ship that was now nearly the sole resource to her name.

And _Kallig_ was… nothing. An opinion gone on talking long past his time, history trying to drag itself up out of the grave instead of being carried by those it had left its brand of worthiness upon. Flesh of my flesh, daughter of my daughters, he called her, but clearly not, when her parents, her relatives, had never mentioned his name once among their prayers to old Korriban.

“But you _are_ ,” Zash began, with the earnest fondness colouring her stolen voice that could still drag at the pit of Ahriss’s heart effectively as a planet’s gravity well. “No matter what has transpired between us, I still trained – ”

Ahriss snapped, and the datapad clattered to the floor, shooting from her grasp on a wave of energy that was the Force’s echo of her emotions: _get away!_

“Your contact on Taris betrayed me and tried to murder me!” she shouted, standing. The eyes that were now Zash’s widened, barely – no, she hadn’t known, Ahriss hadn’t mentioned it. Of course not. “Right after I’d bound the spirit of that raging excuse for a Jedi, right after Ashara’s masters ambushed me and I ended up _fighting for my life -_! Access to the surface of Quesh is restricted, but Thanaton’s _lackeys_ were given permission, even though their only reason for landing was to slaughter those _dimwits_ you took on as students because you had such a _higher_ purpose for me - !”

Zash’s surprise had turned to steel by the time Ahriss paused for a gulp of breath, ozone and hot metal in her nose and the back of her mouth. “Yes, and you will take those thoughts and make fuel of them, turn the blood of betrayal into the blood giving you back your life,” she growled. “Or must I call you _acolyte_? Do not tell me I chose you when you were _weak_.”

The next breath is hot like hate and bile, thrumming energy through her body washing out all but the tired film coating her mind. She forces herself still, then turns and leans on her arms against the control board of the ship. She had wanted…

But Zash was right, of course. It seemed so distant then, Ahriss’s protest that she was not her apprentice… hollow, and lying, and small. Spawn of anger she’d let gnaw on scraps, rather than feed to true strength and harness, because she feared to make it a truth.

Certainly, whatever hopeful she brought out of Korriban for status would be simply a tool, a formality to counterstrike at politics. Not a repetition of her own selfhood, stealing it away and putting Ahriss on the other side of the glass, Zash’s role, and nowhere near prepared for it…

Yet she hated to even contemplate it, the way it rubbed raw and scratchy against the wounds of her own she tried to conceal, still too close to fresh.

Ahriss bit the inside of her cheek, then pushed away from the panel of displays and keypads. “I will send word to you when we reach Korriban,” she declared, pausing as she spoke before heading for the doorway. She needed some more time alone to herself.


End file.
